WIAW-Dessertless

Date: August 13, 2013

Author: astottler

Happy Wednesday! That means, it’s time for another edition of What I Ate Wednesday. Thanks so much to Jenn (who is welcoming a new little human to the world pretty soon!)

I’ll make this post pretty short-I need to study for tomorrow’s Psych final! But all you really care about is food anyways, right??

One quick aside-I went to yoga today. Owwww. I haven’t been in over a month and I’ve gotten soooo tight! Lack of yoga could definitely contributed to my calf problem-it felt much looser after class. I need to make weekly yoga a priority as I train for my next run! And just to clarify-I’m only doing the half of the Nike Women’s marathon. To be honest, my feet couldn’t handle more than that. Exhibit A: It’s a week and a half since my last half and I’m still waiting to regain some of the feeling in my toe. So until I get that figured out….

Ok, onto the food. As you may know, I’m doing a no sugar challenge this week. I’m not doing 0 sugar, just no desserts. So a lot of my eats will feature healthier, no sugar “desserts.” Enjoy!

Breakfast burrito pre-roll. Tip: make the eggs for this in the microwave. It saves dishes and time-the texture is only a tiny bit off and you can’t even tell in burrito form.

Breakfast burrito post-roll.

Lunch sides require their own plate.

Tortilla pizza fail-I sort of overestimated the amount of toppings necessary. This was all cheese and sauce. Whoops…First “dessert.” I’ve been loving my fruit bowls lately-especially anything with peaches and banana, topped with sunflower seed butter. Indian food out of a pouch-hey, good enough for me!

Imitation coconut Chobani. I can’t find anything but the coconut flips, so I took matters into my own hands. After attempt #1, this was spot on. I used Oikos vanilla greek yogurt, which was a better choice because it’s slightly sweeter than my normal vanilla yogurts. I added unsweetened coconut and, this was the key I was missing, coconut extract. I then let it sit overnight so the coconut would soften up. DELICIOUS.

I’ve been loving my lunch plates lately. Where’s the other half of the English muffin you ask? I had the biggest fail splitting it, so it came off in chunks unfit for the toaster.

I took it as a great sign that I was craving grapes for dessert after this meal. I’ve also been loving my dried mango lately (the unsweetened kind). But that could just be major mango withdrawals-I haven’t found much fresh mango lately.

Cheesy polenta with mushrooms, a side of asparagus.

Another delicious fruit bowl as a post-softball snack. (I finally hit a homerun!)

Imitation PB&J crackers. Sunflower seed butter and a raspberry on top of a whole grain and seed cracker.

And I’ll leave you with this 🙂 How can I possibly study with that face to distract me?

Sorry for the short-winded post, I have lots of studying in my near future!

What’s the best thing that happened to you this week? What does your cat look like? Have you ever gone dessertless? Results?

WIAW-The I Didn’t Forget Edition

Date: July 30, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I still can’t believe I forgot about WIAW last week. Let’s just say I was more than ready to go with it this week! As always, a huge thanks to Jenn for hosting 🙂

I began my morning with an early spin class. My calf was sore after Sunday’s run, but after spin class I walked away feeling 1000x better. In an attempt to get a head start on the day, I walked over to Starbucks for a strawberry smoothie and some reading for Psych. Sadly, my productivity was short lived. After about an hour of work, a nap was beginning to feel really necessary. 6 hours of sleep a night is not enough for me! Since it’s summer and I didn’t have to go in to the lab, I saw no problems with a nap.

Sometimes simpler is better-lunch was a plate of snack items- carrots with laughing cow, celery(one stalk with sunflower seed butter, one without), and a Chobani flip. I’m obsessed with the coconut yogurt; I can’t find any of the new flavors anywhere around here though!

I finished the meal with something sweet. A dark chocolate square and a mango log. I picked up a bag of mango logs at a fruit and garlic stand on the way back from San Luis Obispo. We passed through Gilroy, which is the garlic capitol of the world! You can even smell the garlic as you drive by; it’s crazy! The mango log is basically dried fruit ground up in log form and wrapped in coconut. Probably with some sugar added somewhere along the line. They’re DELICIOUS.

I spent the afternoon attempting to catch up on work for my Psych class with my little homework helper.

Please note the previously black shirt-I swear that cat sheds like no other.

I also spent some time reading blogs-please tell me I’m not the only one who gets hungry from reading food blogs?? So being the healthy living blogger that I am, I whipped up a protein cake. I would post the recipe, but it wasn’t exactly a winner. I should have added cocoa powder, which I forgot to do. The “cake” (and I’m using this term loosely here) was made up of protein powder, egg whites, a splash of almond milk, a splash of apple sauce, and some chocolate chips. Like I said, this wasn’t a winner. However, chocolate chips can right a lot of wrongs, so I didn’t mind. I think in the future, I’d prefer more of a sweet scramble kind of deal with no protein powder, banana, and chocolate chips.

Before dinner, I went to Crossfit. I got new Crossfit shoes at the Reebok outlet last weekend, and I was more than ready to try them out!They were awesome! The shoes I had been wearing were worn out and not great for weight lifting because they weren’t so flat. I used to lift weights in flatter shoes which coincidentally were terrible for running. These guys are the best of both worlds!

Lots of Olympic Lifting happening today! Our strength portion was snatches, which I’ve found a new love for. Not gonna lie, I like showing off juuuust a little. Plus, the movement feels so smooth.

The WOD was Elizabeth-my first of the girls!

Cleans and ring dips for 21 reps, 15 reps, and 9 reps. I didn’t Rx this. This is my first time doing cleans at Crossfit, so although I can clean 95 pounds, it had been a little while since I’d done them, and when I lifted weights in the past, I always did fewer reps. I went with 85 pounds for the cleans, which was just about right. I broke up each round into roughly 5s (putting the bar down and resting a little every 5 reps). I also didn’t Rx ring dips. Anything strictly upper body is pretty awful for me. I used a band, and I didn’t do them on rings, I just did regular dips. Well, with those modifications, I finished in 7:43! And my clean muscles will be sore tomorrow…

When I first started lifting weights with my trainer (3 years ago), I only heard him say the names of the lifts, I never saw them written out. I thought “cleans” were actually “clings.” Haha!

When I arrived home, dinner was waiting for me. We had corn and potato chowder with added rotisserie chicken and finished with cheddar cheese and green onions. On the side-asparagus and garlic aioli for dipping.

Not a bad day of eats! I wanted to show a few more pictures to you guys. Here’s my lunch from yesterday:This little guys LOVES meat. I was making turkey wraps, and he would not leave me alone! He kept trying to eat the food off my plate, trying to eat the turkey out of my hand, trying to eat it out of the container. And of course, when he wants something all he does is purr, act super sweet, and forcefully try to push his head into my food. It was so hard to get this picture-I almost had to sacrifice my lunch for the sake of a good picture. The things I do for you guys…

Also, check out this tan line from my hike the other day. Fun fact-I also have a tan line from the strap of the bag I was wearing during the hike. Nice. You know what else is sad? I have a sunscreen tan line. On my face. Only it’s worse than that-I have a tan line from rubbing the sunscreen off the edges of my face with sweat when I run. In other words, I have pale blotches on my cheeks. At first I thought some face product was messing with my skin. Nope.

On another positive note, I’m getting so psyched for my half marathon on Sunday! I’m feeling much better about my calf, although I’m not sure I’ll run at all before the race and risk it tightening up again. We’ll see!

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

What did you eat this week? Highlights? Details?

Green Juice?

Date: April 9, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Monday! My morning today started off differently than usual…No morning workout for me! I had soccer practice/tryouts this afternoon, and given I’m not in my tip-top shape, I shouldn’t push it. I woke up an hour before my alarm. It’s interesting, it is so much easier to go to bed later and get up later, while sleeping the same amount. For example, I went to bed at about 1, and set my alarm for 9. But I woke up before 8. Hey, I’m not complaining!

For breakfast, I tried vanilla Chobani for the first time.

Expiration date on my birthday! Most of the yogurts in my fridge have that date too. 🙂

To be honest, I was not impressed. It wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t get all the hype about Chobani. It didn’t seem any different than any other yogurt.

This is probably my favorite, but it hasn’t been stocked at the last few stores that I went too. I also like the Icelandic yogurt. Yesterday, I also bought some goat milk yogurt, so that should be interesting to try.

I was planning on eating my yogurt plain, but I ended up topping it with banana and sunflower butter.

See that on the side? That green juice? I don’t know why I was under the impression that I would like it. It tastes very…green. I got like 3 different types (although one is way fruitier, thank goodness). Yeah. I poured myself like half a cup an had to chug it, shivering the whole time. And that one was supposed to be “sweet.” I should have gotten a different type that had ginger and like 20 grams more sugar. I was debating between the two. *Shudder* I don’t think I will be able to finish it. Are you guys green juice fans? Any tips?

Between classes, I ventured down into a basement of one of the buildings to try a new to me cafe. I’ve always seen signs but never checked it out. I will definitely go back. There were lots of good sounding sandwiches, although I was lazy and just picked up a prepackaged one.

I haven’t had egg salad in forever! And it was good. 🙂 I avoided about half the bread. More on that in a minute…

They also had the most amazing selection of baked goods. But not just baked goods, my favorite type of baked goods: quick breads/cakes. Marble cake. Pumpkin Bread. Banana bread. Everything! I ended up settling on an oat carrot-some type of veggie-bread. It was delicious, and not too sweet!

A while ago I talked about how I think I might have some type of problem with gluten. Or blood sugar. Which in theory is why I’m attempting to avoid grains. I’m not sure if I’ve been avoiding them better lately, or if I just haven’t had to sit through class after eating them, so I kind of just figured it would be fine. Well…About an hour after lunch, I was sitting in class and all of a sudden I could not keep my eyes open! I wasn’t tired at all that day until that moment. And my mind kept blending the chemistry in lecture with various parts of my life and it was very confusing, and I was struggling so hard to keep my eyes open. This went on for about half an hour, and then it passed. This is the same experience I’ve had in the past; all of the sudden I CANNOT keep my eyes open, but eventually it passes and is ok near the end of class. This is definitely not right. I should probably go get that checked out so I know what the actual cause is, not just my theories. And while I’m at it, and can get my “nut allergies” checked out as well…I feel like I have been a hot mess lately with food, because these issues have appeared out of nowhere in the past year.

After classes were done for the day, I snacked on a mango and a raw chocolate quinoa bar, which was surprisingly delicious. I will definitely be getting that again. Here’s a last-minute decision picture. Sorry!

After sitting around my dorm and chatting a bit, I headed off to practice with the club soccer team. All of the girls were so nice and welcoming! It was pretty tiring, but no undoable. I doubt I’ll be asked back though, because they play at a much higher level than me, which I knew going in (especially since I haven’t played in 4 years…whoops).

It was a lot of fun though. Afterwards I realized I have a nice little blister going on my foot. I guess you don’t notice those things when you’re going hard!

Dinner was boring. Why, oh why does my dining hall insist on steaming plain steamed cauliflower so often? Chicken, rice, greens, cauliflower, and FRUIT. So thirsty!

Not the best meal but it got the job done. For a little treat I mixed up some soft serve with milk for a makeshift milkshake, which was refreshing. Some cocoa puffs may also have been involved. 🙂

I’m considering tagging along with the running club, which is basically a ton of runners meeting up and running different trails. Once again, given my current shape, I’m probably way out of my league, but I guess I seem to be getting in over my head a lot lately. We shall see.

Overall, not a bad day. Super windy though. I absolutely hate the wind, it is so annoying! Spin classes start tomorrow!

So, tell me: Green juice. Love it or hate it?